Because they want to succeed at any cost against armed law abiding citizens. Soon they will be assisted by Drones.If this escalates any further, the need for gulags or concentration camps won’t be necessary. There will be few citizen survivors left alive for internment.

Oh, you’re the miscreant, eh? I got moderated by Brad – of all people – one night. In my defense, there were massive quantities of scotch involved and you can’t say those kinds of things about public officials.

Sometimes cops get shot at and they want to have something that will protect them. I’m okay with that – most law enforcement are just guys who want to go home at the end of the day, just like me. What I’d like to know is, if there’s just one for New Mexico and West Texas, then where are the rest?

I tell you what they will do. They will do just as they fucking please. I had an grown uncle who was on the run. Guilty as hell but on the run and we had no clue where he was at the time. The FBI and local police would occasionally stop by my grandmothers house and ask if he was there. When she said “no but come on in” they would. Then the FBI would proceed to turn the mattress of every bed over. Open the drawers in her kitchen and dump the contained items in the floor. Dump trash cans out int he floor. Move furniture and without doing structural damage generally ransack the house. All the time smiling. Then they would walk out. End of story.

Don’t worry, they don’t have incediary tear gas.
That would be paranoid.
/snark off

Seriously, wtf is the need for these things? This is just another example of the normalization of a federalized police force. I t does NOT end well when this crap is employed by asshats looking to prove their worth.
If this arming up continues we’re going to have to revist the reason for writing up the 3rd amendment, damnit.
Really guys, honest question, why in the hell should I trust the motives of DHS when they have armored vehicles and 2 billion rounds?

OK then, lets have somebody find the oath the DHS brownshirts take.
I’m not kidding, anybody??
Is there an oath?
Is it to the constitution?
Who exactly are these troops drawn from and to whom to they answer? To whom do they pledge allegiance?

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, federal judges and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President.

This Federal police and surveillance state is being constructed by entrenched unelected career bureaucrats. These people are accumulating power over a lifetime. They hide under anonymity of “government”, but they are real people. Politicians come and go, but these people stay, attracted by the power they wield.

It used to be that when a new politician was elected, he would bring in his new guys, and the current guys would get swept out. That prevented this accumulation of power.